Church: Yeah, it’s That Important

Eph. 2:19-22

Pentectost 18

9/21/08

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The Church; what is the church? Well that’s easy, there’s a lot of analogies that are at our disposal to help us in our definition. The church is like a gas station: its the place you go to fill your tank when you are running on empty. The church is like a battery charger that you can plug into when your spiritual energy is flagging. The church is like a visit to the doctors office where healing medicine is prescribed to heal whatever ails you.

You see, there’s a lot of very good analogies that express the way folks view the Holy Christian Church and also their local congregation. While there is some truth in these analogies, there is something rather peculiar about each of them? Did you notice? Did you notice that each of them cast the church in the role of fulfiller of me and my needs?

Now please don’t misunderstand me. There’s nothing wrong with this, Jesus created the church so that through it, he might fulfill the spiritual needs of people. He did! And it does! But it’s more than that! The church is more than a fulfiller of my needs. The church is the holy temple of the Lord of which I am a part and you are a part. Together, as Paul put it in Ephesians, we are the very stones that have been brought together to make the house of Lord, the place where God lives! So the church is not faceless dispenser of religion; it’s God’s people! God lives in the midst of his people! God lives in the midst of the assembly!

Now from time to time, you might have adopted one of those analogies I mentioned as your understanding of the church. And perhaps you never really saw that it was very important for you to be here very much. Maybe you have a big gas tank or an extra large capacity battery back to keep you amply supplied with enough spirituality to keep you going and you only need to “top off your tank” every so often.

If you are among those who have thought like this, I want you to know that you are mistaken. For what we do here together is easily among the most important things that you will ever be a part of. It’s important to God, it’s important to others, it’s important to you. Let’s take a moment to consider these three different ways that your presence in the assembly of your fellow Christians is important.

First, Let’s consider how it is important to God. All you need to do to get an idea how important your fellowship with God is, is consider his working throughout all history. The Lord has always been keenly interested in fellowship with you and me and all people. When creation was new and fresh and there was no sin, the Lord and the people he created enjoyed a togetherness that could not be beat. But when humanity became sinful there came the breaking of the perfect friendship. Since that time, God dedicated himself to getting us back together with him. He pitched his tent in the midst of Israel. Then he joined us in our flesh, became one of us so that he could, once and for all, take away the sins that ruined what we had with him so that we could live with him in peace. Jesus was about reestablishing our fellowship with our creator. As our Lord reveals his plans to the people of the Old Testament, you can hear him, again and again and again longingly saying “And they will be my people and I will be their God.” (Jer. 24:7. Lev. 26:12 Ezek. 11:20 and many more) This is what God has always longed for. In the Book of Revelation, last chapter, after all is completed and all of his plans are fulfilled, he excitedly declares: “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. I will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or crying or pain for the old order of things will pass away” (Rev. 21:3-4).

Does it sound like God considers himself to be gas pump or battery charger to you? No. He sounds kind of personal doesn’t he? And indeed he is personal. In Jeremiah he says “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.” (Jer. 1:5) In the First chapter of Ephesians he says that he chose you....to be his before the creation of the world. (Eph.1:4) He called you to faith and salvation in Christ Jesus! From everything we hear about him he is very very interested in you. By no means does he consider himself a gas pump or battery charger. On the contrary...he considers himself to be your Father in Heaven. And as any loving father would, he wants to spend time with you! He longs for a deeper relationship with you.

So why is it important to him, that you regularly participate in worship with your fellow Christians. Because that’s where he dwells. He dwells in the assembly of believers. He has vowed to be here. Won’t you respond by vowing to be here too? Actually, you already have, when you were confirmed or received as a member of this congregation you took such a vow! So keep it why don’t you!

Your taking part in the assembly in Worship and also in Bible class and also other Christian activities is important to God, but it is also important to your fellow Christian. As the text says “We are joined together” as we rise to become the temple of the Lord. We are the building blocks of his house. Okay, you’ve got the imagery in your head? We are the stones that are built together to form the house of God. Now think of a block wall with 2/3s of the stones missing! Kind of unsettling isn’t it? Such a wall would lack strength; such a wall would be rather precarious, tenuous, even dubious. Such a wall would be wobbly; Most people would not want to to have anything to do with such a wall for fear that it would come down on them.

And so it is with any congregation whose members have no commitment to one another. If you lack commitment to the people whom God has given you in this congregation, the whole congregation will suffer from your lack of commitment. As a whole, it takes the wind out of a congregations sails when it sees that many of it’s members do not give a rip.

You regularly being part of the Christian assembly is important to God; it’s important to your fellow church member, and it is important to you. That’s the last one. Why is it important for you to regularly connect with your church? Think back now. How did God bring you to faith? It was through various people in your life. God used Christian people in your life to reach out to you. That’s the way he works. He says that the various people of the church are his body, carrying out his mission on earth. Okay, so he’s used the people of your life to help you get your start in the faith; could it be that he might want to use people again to help you now grow in the faith? We were not meant to be Christians in A Mason Jar on Funk and Waganell’s porch! We are not to be “untouched by human hands!” We were meant to meet regularly with other Christians so that they can help us and we can help them. If one persists in being a Christian hermit, there’s a pretty good chance he will develop some rather weird and perhaps even scripturally wrong or sinful points of view. As fellow stones....guided by Christ Jesus our Chief Cornerstone, we are meant to help each other stay in plum as we “rise to become a holy temple in the Lord.”

Now if you heard the Gospel lesson for today, you might think that it says something completely different from what I’ve been saying. There you have the parable of the workers. Those who worked in the vineyard all day got paid the same as those who only worked the last hour. And perhaps you’re thinking that this means that God doesn’t really require any commitment from you. Perhaps you’re planning to “get serious” and become more faithful at the 11th hour of your life and kind of squeak by like these last hired fellows in the parable. But you forget that these eleventh hour guys weren’t asked to come to the Vineyard until later and they didn’t know any better. You have been asked. You were asked when you were baptized, when you first came to faith. So you are different from them because you know better. Do not plan to be faithful in the future, be faithful now!

God has been faithful to us. He has faithfully kept his promise to redeem and save us in his Son Jesus Christ. He has been faithful to us. He calls us now to respond to this wonderful gift of salvation he has us by being faithful to him. Faithful in our worship; Faithful to our calling to be brothers and sisters in the family of God. Amen